


Paper Moon

by lawlessearth



Category: Lovecraft Country (TV)
Genre: Christina is a layered antagonist, F/F, Missing Scene, One Shot, Ruby is alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27319210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawlessearth/pseuds/lawlessearth
Summary: There is a certain thrill to being looked at. Ruby is no stranger to it. But Christina looks at her with eyes that carry the energy of a lion.
Relationships: Ruby Baptiste & Letitia "Leti" Lewis, Ruby Baptiste/Christina Braithwhite
Comments: 11
Kudos: 115





	Paper Moon

**Author's Note:**

> My attempt at fixing the problems (IMO) of that season finale. Also, I know nothing about H.P. Lovecraft or the book by Matt Ruff. You have been warned.

_“I’m sorry for doing this.”_

_\- -_

Voices.

Ruby wakes up as if from a dream. The room is gray-yellow. Someone with Leti’s silhouette is hovering over her. She is holding something, murmuring foreign words that Ruby feels she knows.

For a moment, her mind is blissfully blank like it sometimes is when she tries to remember a vivid dream she just had but can’t. Something has happened. Something important. But remembering takes too much effort. The weight bears down on her. Ruby tries to fight it, eyelids fluttering.

At once, Leti rouses, noticing the small movement. “Ruby! Can you hear me?” And then to someone else in the room: “Keep going! It’s working!”

The voices grow louder.

Ruby feels a hand on her face. Leti’s. But the softness of it, the delicateness of it, reminds her of blue eyes and white skin. Eyes that are fiery and intense – never soft. When those eyes focus on hers, Ruby trembles for no reason. There is a certain thrill to being looked at. Ruby is no stranger to it. But Christina looks at her with eyes that carry the energy of a lion. Seeing more than what Ruby presents to the world, staring as though contemplating every detail, even what her bones might look like underneath all the layers of artifice she wore like a shield.

It is unnerving.

Terrifying.

Thrilling, like something forbidden.

_“I’m sorry for doing this.”_ The voice is a memory.

Ruby gasps as pain, white and hot, burns deep inside her belly.

Leti calls her name again. “Stay with me, girl. Stay with me,” she urges, grabbing Ruby’s hand and squeezing. It is an anchor, the weight of it bears her down.

Ruby tries to squeeze back but her body seems not her own. Trapped in a void of agony, remembering….

_\- -_

_Christina appears on top of the basement stairs. She’s standing so very still._ _Ruby sees her. Her face is taut, blue eyes burning. Suddenly, the glass vial feels cold in Ruby’s hands._

_“It’s okay,” Christina says calmly, reassuringly, but it is the silence before that makes Ruby quake. The slight catch even as her voice does not rise above a whisper. “The things we do for family, right?” Her eyes confronts Ruby but without challenge or rancor._

_She has planned for this, Ruby realizes. “You knew,” she says hollowly, suddenly recalling in vivid detail the kiss they shared in this very basement. The tenderness of it, incongruous to the coldness of her reception now. “You knew and still you let me…”_

_The woman looks down briefly. “Forgive me,” she says with her usual impertinence. “I missed the part where you fucking cared.”_

_“Am I supposed to believe that you do?”_

_Christina is quiet, watching her, gaze unwavering._

_Ruby exhales through her nose, long and slow. For the first time since she’s decided to do this, she feels doubt. Leti’s request, it has seemed like nothing at the time. A few drops of her blood to prevent her from hurting Tic seems a small price to pay. Hardly thirty silver pieces’ worth. Leti (and her unborn child) is family, for better or for worse. They are blood, and blood is real. Blood is true. What William has offered her that night is nothing but a paper moon world. It would be a lie, she’s convinced herself more than once even as Christina bursts out of William’s skin and shows her the bare truth, bloody and grotesque._

_“You don’t really want me to answer that,” Christina finally says, studying Ruby’s profile._

_Ruby exhales again, this time more forcefully, ignoring the insinuation and her own resistance to it. Because to entertain it is to accept the guilt of what she has done. It is no betrayal if there is no trust in the first place. “And the money for the house?” She challenges instead._

_Leti’s latest revelation to her that afternoon at the graveyard allows Ruby to spin in a different axis than the one she follows before, causing her to take a separate course._

_This Christina sees as soon as she asks the question. She answers evenly, “Freely given, freely taken.”_

_“You asked Leti to spy on Tic and then came for me when she refused.”_

_“I asked her for the Orrery and told her the truth about dear cousin Tic," she retorts, adding, "And yes, I came for you, but I never once lied to you.”_

_Ruby scoffs. “You said that before. You and your bloody truths.”_

_“You prefer your truth dressed up in notions.”_

_“I prefer my truth as the truth,” Ruby says firmly. “No omissions. I asked you to tell me everything.”_

_“And I told you what you needed to know.”_

_“That’s not everything.”_

_“No,” Christina agrees but does not explain further. Sunlight streaming from the casement windows cast her eyes in the palest hue, hiding their depths._

_Ruby thinks this would have been easier if William were standing here. His careless honesty always seems easier to take than the measured truths the woman often wields as an armor or a knife. Even in bed, naked and more vulnerable than she has ever been, she wears it like a shield. Christina never once lets herself be taken in by Ruby, not when her desire is as palpable as the touch of her fingers and lips, not even when Ruby abandons herself to the pleasure of blond hair (William’s or Christina’s, it doesn’t matter, not at this point) between her legs._

_“You did care for him,” Christina supposes, leaving the unasked question as a provocation._

_Ruby doesn’t take the bait, doesn’t want to. Despite everything, she’s made the choice. Sleeping with William (then Christina), knowing who and what he is, knowing what it means, knowing the truth and using it as leverage. She knows what she’s done._

_Christina regards her quietly._

_“I’m sorry for doing this,” Ruby tells her, honestly, laying her heart out bare on the ground._

_Christina nods once. Her slender frame makes its way down the stairs towards her. Ruby watches her approach. She stops right in front of her, staring with eyes so bright they eclipse all other light in the room. Like before, her face remains a marble statue save for the slight knot on her brow until Ruby raises her chin, in as much anticipation as a gesture of defiance._

_Then Christina speaks,_

_\-- and Ruby stops breathing._

_The language is familiar to her ears by now. At first, she feels nothing, just a tightening around her throat, then the sensation of squeezing inside her body, around her very lungs. It takes over slowly, the spell. Ruby first sees black spots around the corners of her eyes. They increase in number until her vision is completely filled by them. Blessed darkness. The feeling is unlike she’s ever felt before. Not with the potion or the excruciating return to her form. It is like –_

_Being put to sleep._

_Her senses continue while her mind jerks and stutters. The shattered blue eyes of the spellcaster register in her mind’s eye and Ruby wonders if that is deliberate – her experiencing of death without the physical agony._

_“I’m sorry for doing this,” Christina whispers lowly, the white devil echoing her own words to her like a farce._

\- -

On the bed, in that same basement, Ruby’s eyes finally jerk open. She follows with a wordless cry as the burning in her belly seems to erupt into flames. She looks down on her own body and sees actual yellow bright flames engulfing her under the white sheets and she cries out again, this time in a kind of release. Pain is shooting up and down her spine, exciting her nerve endings, telling her without equivocation that she is alive. Somehow.

The flames do not burn as they pulse around her in rhythm with the sharp bursts of pressure she feels flowing in her veins.

Alive.

_“It’s okay,”_ she almost hears Christina say again. The reassuring tone incongruous with the situation Ruby has found herself.

“Ruby!” Leti breaks through the thick miasma that coats her consciousness. “Are you okay? Say something, please!”

Something nags at Ruby. Her mind is too slow to connect the dots. She looks around her, at the familiar faces of Montrose, Hippolyta, Diana and a woman she’s never met before, all gathered around her in a circle.

(The circle of protection is the first thing that Christina teaches Ruby when she introduces her to magic. She is a precise teacher, Christina, always drumming it into Ruby’s consciousness that the slightest deviation from the formula could produce a different result. "If you falter in the least bit in your intention, it's the difference between life and death," Christina tells her more than once.)

“What…?” Ruby croaks.

Leti, ugly crying with abandon, puts down the Book of Names and rushes to wrap her sister in her arms. Ruby takes the hug and listens to the fervent whispers of apology. The regret and anguish she pours out tells Ruby that this has less to do with her and more to do with the fact that Atticus is not in the basement. _So I failed and Christina went and cast her spell,_ she surmises, _butwhy is Leti still here? Why are they all here?_ She opens her mouth but Leti beats her to it.

“How are you feeling?” She asks with sisterly concern, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

Their relationship has been rocky for most of their lives but the bond of blood is undeniable. Like guilt, it bears down on them. _“The things we do for family, right?”_ The line comes back to her unbidden.

"Christina?" Ruby can't help herself.

"Dead," Diana says flatly.

Silence descends in the room. Hippolyta places a hand on one of Diana's shoulders, which are strangely uneven and shrouded in what looks like a cape. _That's new_ , Ruby thinks, feeling her eyes start to burn. Montrose is looking at her as if in challenge, daring her to betray any sympathy she has for the white bitch who murdered his son.

“You mean the same white bitch who murdered my sister?” Leti shuts him down quickly. Montrose violently turns away and walks off, leaving a lot of things still unpacked.

_Except she didn't_ , Ruby wants to say, watching Leti look after Montrose with an unreadable expression on her face, finally starting to understand something. The fiery blue eyes looking down at her. They are never soft, her eyes. Even in despair, they look hard and sharp like shattered glass.

"Ruby,” Leti says, turning to her once again, wiping the tears on her face. “We came as soon as we could, found you here just barely holding on. There are two other bodies – Christina’s manservant is one of them. They’re not alive, not dead either. Unlike you. You were only sleeping. We brought you back using the Book of Names.”

“Something went wrong with the spell that woman put on you,” Hippolyta reveals. “Maybe a slight deviation. Something she herself probably didn’t even realize.”

And so there it is.

Ruby turns her face away, allowing tears to pour out silently.

“Are you okay?” Leti asks, alarmed.

Christina’s intention deviated at the last moment, granting her once lover a long dark sleep, instead of the death of all senses. Ruby swallows with the burden of this knowledge and echoes, "I'm okay."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Edit (11/02/2020): Grammar and a few tweaks here and there.


End file.
